In the SFCB Gallery
Jan 25-Apr 25, 2008
Curators: Mary Austin & Kathleen Burch
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 The Intimate Stranger
Breyten Breytenbach, poet Set in hand-set Samson and Libra type; letterpress printed in eight colors with three additional pigments applied by hand on dampened Nideggen flax paper handmade for this book by Bridget O'Malley at Cave Paper. Sewn with silk into a flax paper cover. The horoscope and multicolored signs and symbols are drawn by Carolee Campbell and printed from photopolymer plates. Additional symbols are applied by hand using pure earth pigments. The boards are covered in flax paper hand-coated with a mixture of ochre pigment and fine volcanic pumice. A second inner cover holds the text and is sewn into the spine with a thin, purple silk cord. An additional hardcover enclosure, handmade by Judi Conant, protects the book and echoes the theme of the artwork using an artful locking device. A separate chapbook containing a legend for the text-inspired signs and symbols completes the edition. In a language rich with streamlined ornament, Breyten Breytenbach charts the geography of the land while, on a shifting plane, he conjures the landscape of the human heart. In this single, long prose poem, every paragraph has been given its own page or double-page spread. Each of the 32 pages is embellished with signs and symbols printed in multiple colors which have been inspired by the text: Each journey will be into the unknown but even so routes are traced the way thoughts and dreams become words and the words become tracks and and the tracks turn to sand. Sand moving in a haze over your vision will be footsteps - your own, those of the ancestors, those of your companions. Birds will remember you in the sky, their flight an arrow in the soil. That's how you read the paragraphs of your life. | |||
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